I woke up Saturday morning feeling queasy. Might have been a combination of nervousness and lack of food since my arrival in Toronto on Thursday, but I was totally not having any of it. I refused to be sick on the day of my meet & greet with Misha!

I ended up missing Corin's morning panel and part of Traci's, but I had definitely needed that extra time because I was feeling better, if not extremely hungry, by the time I had to show up for the m & g.

A group of 10 of us waited outside while Creation staff finished setting up the room where we'd be meeting Misha. After checking our ID, we were allowed inside, and were told that the seats were on a first come, first serve basis and there was to be "no fighting" over seating. It's amazing to me that some people would actually have to be told that, but the ladies in our group seemed pretty cool and there was no fighting, thankfully.

So anyway, Misha came in, fashionably late and looking fabulous and wearing very celebrity-esque sunglasses. He spoke quietly to the Creation lady about going for a run later and then sat down at the head of the table. He ended up sitting right next to me! I geeked out a little on the inside, I admit.

I thought it was pretty cool that the Creation lady allowed us to take pictures for the first 5 minutes. And so, because I'm a rebel and I do what I want, that is how I managed to sneak two short video clips before putting my camera away. :-DVideo clip ahoy!

So Misha was greeting all of us when a plane flew over the hotel and distracted him. For those of you who don't know, the Sheraton Toronto Airport Hotel & Convention Centre lies directly in the flight path of planes that are coming in for a landing at Toronto Pearson Airport. Meaning that, every single minute all day long, GIANT airplanes can be seen flying right over top the hotel. It's very loud of course, so he flinched and said, "That sounded like it was right on top of us!" and, of course, it was. lol

So that got him talking on the subject of airports, and how he got lost inside one on his way to the convention (can't remember if it was leaving or arriving. Probably arriving because it would be an unfamiliar airport).

He said he also had trouble with the driver service that Creation had provided for him. They called him at his house at like 5 AM, asking where he needed to be dropped off, and he was like, "....First of all, how did you get my number? And second, I don't know! Call Creation and ask them. No... I don't have their number." And then they called him again later, saying that his credit card hadn't gone through. But he wasn't the one who paid; Creation was. :-P

So anyway, he arrived at Toronto airport and, after getting through customs he finds the driver that was waiting for him, and the driver was like, "So, where's the hotel?" lol. The driver then proceeded to take him to every single Sheraton hotel possible, except for the one that he was actually staying at. ("Hmmm... I don't think the convention is taking place in a hotel inside the airport....")

So, we started chatting about Friday night's cruise, because Mellissa, the girl sitting right across from me, and Young Sim, the girl sitting to my right, and I, had all been on it and we were saying that it had made our day, etc, when another lady interrupted. She started saying to Misha about how he had once said that he would never do stuff at night for these conventions and blah blah blah...

To make a (very) long story short, she basically monopolized the first 15 minutes of the meet & greet with talk about all the Star Trek conventions she's been to and then, for some reason, she wouldn't shut up about the movie Karla, in which Misha acted as rapist/serial killer Paul Bernardo.

Now, anyone who knows anything about Misha, or has seen convention footage of him, knows that he's uncomfortable talking about that movie. He's not proud of being in it, doesn't recommend people watch it, and generally likes to steer clear of the topic. So it was VERY AWKWARD having to sit there and listen to her talk about the rapes and murders of those poor women and about how "America it full of serial killers and psychos," which I thought was an extremely rude thing to say in front of an American

But anyway, when SHE wasn't talking, Misha managed to get in a few words about how it was a horrible set to work on, because the director threatened to kill the actors and they refused to go back on set until he was replaced. He also mentioned that when he was first in Toronto filming Karla, he was sitting on a bus one day and was telling this old couple that he was in the city because he was filming a movie, and the two of them actually got up from their seats and moved away from him, lol.

So at this point, the mood was waaaaay down in the room, and Karla Woman was still seemingly oblivious to how uncomfortable we all were, so when the word "freaky" came up, I leapt on the opportunity to segue into a still-freaky but lighter topic. Namely, Gishwhes. :-D

Misha seemed relieved to talk about something that wasn't so dour, and asked if I had gotten the latest e-mail. I said I hadn't signed up for e-mails, and he said that was smart, lol. A chick named Anna chimed in, saying how the latest video creeped her out and that she knew the lady who "won" the first round of Gishwhes. Misha said she was a really good sport for putting herself in a straight jacket

. The Karla woman interjected, saying that she didn't know what Gishwhes was and wanted an explanation.

Gishwhes is... um... Gishwhes defies explanation, lol.

I said something along the lines of "Gishwhes is Misha Collins being a troll on the internet," and Misha was like, "What IS trolling, anyway?" and that lead to the awesome discussion, lead by a Anna, about the definition of trolling, and how it's a play on a fishing term "trawling," in which you bait a hook and tease the fish to try and take the bait.

[Fangirl Moment: Misha was gesturing a lot and his hands were like, RIGHT THERE next to my arm, and omg, I was sitting so close to him~! Okay, okay, back to the report, lol.]

Speaking of the internet and fannish activity on it, Mellissa got a chance to ask Misha if he ever went online with the purpose of looking up fan-made stuff, like fanfic, fanart, or fanvids. She said that she enjoyed making fanvids and was just checking if he'd ever seen any (not necessarily HER vids, just vids in general). He said that he tries to avoid that kind of stuff whenever possible and wouldn't necessarily have the time to go looking for it, even if he was interested (So rest easy, fanfic writers! lol).

He said his MOM looks at that stuff, though. Every now and then she goes looking through all the fanvids and will send him bulk e-mails with links to all of the ones she likes. We made a noise like we thought that was sweet, and he kind of laughed it off, saying she also sends him e-mails about LOLcats macros.

Since he gets to travel so often for conventions, I asked him which was his favourite place he's been to (even if it was just for vacation and not for a con). He mentioned a couple of places that I couldn't picture on the map in my mind's eye, but then he mentioned going to Nepal and that was one place I knew a tiny bit about, so I asked if he had gone there for the hiking. He said he had, but that they wanted to avoid the Annapurna Circuit, which is popular amongst backpackers and is the most.... um, "commercialized" trail there, I guess you could say. So instead, he and his wife ended up lost in Nepal on an unmaintained trail without food or water for a day or so. He made a really funny crying face, imitating Vicki, and was like, "We're all gonna dieeeeeee~!" LOL

He continued on to talk about his work in Haiti with Random Acts. He had some really wonderful things to say about the volunteers who raised money and came with him to Haiti, and about how it made such a difference in the lives of the children there. He also said that Matt was supposed to go, but chickened out at the last second, lol!

He told us that Random Acts was going to be going through an overhaul very soon (which might mean the website or the organization itself); that there's room for improvement and that hopefully doing that will make it more successful. There are also plans for another H2H (Hope 2 Haiti) trip.

On the subject of Supernatural, he said that everything that he's filmed for this season has aired, and that he thinks they're currently filming something like episode 10, and he hasn't received a call back yet. He joked and said he hoped the ratings tanked, lol!

There was a general consensus around the table that Misha was awesome as Godstiel and Leviacas, and that "All the awards should be given to you." lol. I made a comment about enjoying the double fake-out of Cas being dead, then alive, and then dead, but that I was disappointed that Castiel was basically soup now. Anna said that she and her friends thought Leviacas was just Misha on tequila, and he laughed and agreed ("It was essentially just me being myself.") Karla Woman asked if it was really THE trench-coat that was floating in the water after Cas' final scene, and Misha said, "Yeah. There's like... 20 of them."

Anna and her friend Margaret asked him how West was doing. He got really excited and said that they'd had their first phone "conversation" through iPhone Facetime, and he made little baby cooing noises that he said West parroted back to him. So cute!

Young Sim (who I'd met through Twitter) was sitting next to me and had a bright green present on the table in front of her, and Misha was kind of eyeing the package the whole time everyone was talking. Finally, he turned to her and said, "So! Should I open the present now?" and she handed it over. Creation's website says no gift-giving is allowed during the meet & greets, but the handler who was in the room with us was really cool and allowed it. :-)

The present was a joint-effort by Young and about 20-30 fans living in South Korea. They all chipped in with money so Young could buy it and give it to Misha. It was a traditional Korean outfit for a one-year-old boy and was very beautiful and colourful. There was a little hat in there that he picked up and managed to fit onto his head, and he sat there for the rest of the conversation wearing it. LOL.

He went around the table and asked everyone where they were from and what their job was. Mellissa, I think, worked at a printing place. She mentioned how people would come in requesting strange or lewd things on hats and mugs. Tamara was a professor and worked at the university she first went to as an undergrad, I think is what she said. She liked it so much that she never left, which I think is awesome. :-D

Anna was print/design student at Ryerson, and had a paper due immediately after the convention was over. This lead to an interesting aside by Misha, who said that when he was in college he suffered from acute T.M.J (which is pain in your jaw hinge), and that it went away as soon as he finished school. He figures he had been grinding his teeth because of stress, LOL.

Margaret was also a student, I believe, and was in the forestry industry. Misha talked with her about how fun it is to use a chainsaw, and that he cut down some trees and felt really accomplished because he used the wood to build a shed for himself. Well, actually, he used the word "butch" to describe how he felt, which then led to an interesting conversation about the men in the forestry industry thinking they're all that because they used a chainsaw. Woman can use a chainsaw too! lol :-D

I don't remember where Karla Woman, her sister, and her elderly mother are from, and I don't care, but she spoke a few minutes about knowing some professor of psychology who was at the con gathering info on a book about Fandom. And then there was a quiet woman sitting next to her who said she was from Japan. Misha asked her how it was in Japan, and I don't think her English was very strong because she didn't understand right away that Misha was referring to the tsunami and nuclear power plant fiasco. She said that clean-up was under way, but that it would take a while, but that tourists should still come to Japan. <3

Next was Young, who seemed suspiciously reluctant to say where she worked, so Misha of course reached the "obvious" conclusion that she was a prostitute, LMFAO! ^^; We all had a good laugh and she was really embarrassed, and finally said that she was between jobs but that she had worked in the food industry, or something like that. Maybe at a hotel, I don't remember. She said that she missed her friends, who had flown in from Korea just to go to the convention and were gone back now. She said her family was also gone back to Korea and she was living on her own in Toronto ("I have so much laundry now!"). After finding that out, Misha said he felt bad for calling her a prostitute, LOL.

Then Misha turned to me and said, "Aaaand you're from the Philippines, of course," which is in reference to the cruise when I told him that I was from Nova Scotia and he joked that maybe I was lying about that, lol. I told him I had gone to art school ("And I bet you're making LOADS of money now!"), and that I work at a photo lab. I told him that we used to print 500 rolls of film a day and now we're lucky if we get one, and he seemed really shocked. I told him it was because everyone just shared pics on Facebook now, lol.

Oh, I also warned everyone not to print pictures from Facebook, EVER, because it comes out low-quality, and Anna and I had a moment of shared print-production geekiness where we despaired over the pixilated pictures that were printed on this year's convention banners that were getting auctioned off for obscene amounts of money. It was also at this point that Misha seemed to realize that he was still wearing the baby hat on his head and took it off, LOL. Good times. :-D

He asked if anybody had any more questions, and no one could think of anything, so he decided to make a "final statement," about Toronto being a cool city and that he really liked the downtown and all the ethnic restaurants. We suggested that he go see the CN Tower, if he had time. He said he hoped that he would be asked back for next year's Toronto Con, and we all laughed and said he was already on the guest list.

And then the meet & greet was officially over. We all got up and posed for group photos, and the handler was so cute because she kept on pressing the shutter button too soon. ("One... two.... oops.") :-D

So, overall it was awesome, if a little awkward in the beginning. I'm so happy I decided to participate in it. It was so nice meeting everyone and getting to talk with Misha. He was really cool. :-D

Comments

Audrey
on Oct 17, 2011 at 11:46PM

Hey there!Thanks for the report! I was at the Con too. I asked the Flashpoint question to Elias and made the teleportation comment directed at Gabe, and I was wondering if you had the whole footage, since what you uploaded on Youtube didn't include the Flashpoint part. Terrific point of view you had there BTW! Thanks for putting the vids up.

Sorry Audrey, whatever footage I had of that panel has been posted. :-)

Audrey
on Oct 21, 2011 at 11:35AM

Thanks for letting me know. :)

spikeschilde621
on Nov 2, 2011 at 10:36PM

i knew it! i knew it!Saturday night i went outside to smoke and the head of creation was SCREAMING into her phone about how the Limo driver took him to the wrong hotel and he was late and something about a credit card but i was like O__Oit was really awkward.and i told my friend, "i bet you they're talking about misha."idk how i knew it was him, but i did!

Caitlin
on Nov 25, 2012 at 01:45AM

Sounds like you had a great time! I'm not sure if you will see this but if you do was the meet and greet like a ton of money? Cause I'm going to a convention with my friend in March and we want to go to a meet and greet. Also, we are under 17 (kinda embarrassing I know!) and so do you know if we would be allowed to go to that meet and greet if we still win a few seats? If you don't it's totally fine. I mean it will be awesome anyway I just need a few questions answered. But anyway thanks so much for sharing all your convention stuff, it's really fun to read/watch! :)

It cost me about $600 to get the meet & greet with Misha, I think. The seats are put up for auction by Creation Entertainment on their website about 2 weeks before the convention, and you place a bid and hope that you get a seat. Misha's m&g tends to be expensive, because there is usually only 10 seats available.